Visuoperceptive impairment in adult patients with occipital lobe epilepsies

The aim of the study was to verify whether adult patients with occipital lobe epilepsy (OLE) are at risk for cognitive impairment compared with controls. Twenty patients with OLE and 20 controls, matched as closely as possible to the epilepsy group in terms of gender, age, education, and intelligence, were administered a battery of tests based on visuoperceptive domains. None of the participants was affected by progressive pathologies, received any medication other than antiepileptic drugs, nor had a psychiatric background. We noted a statistically significant difference between patients with OLE and controls in the following tasks: Perceptive Differences Test, and Object Denomination Test, and Famous Faces Test (P < 0.05). No difference was noted between symptomatic and nonsymptomatic patients with respect to neuropsychological results (P > 0.05). The linear regression analysis performed did not show any statistically significant contribution by clinical variables. Our data confirm that patients with OLE manifest subtle difficulties in processing and mental manipulation of visual spatial data.